Movie Review: X-Men: First Class

After two weak entries in the X-Men film franchise (the juvenile X3, and the unimpressive X-Men Origins: Wolverine), I was pretty leery going into X-Men: First Class. Yellow uniforms? Magneto’s helmet? Eurgh. Has there ever been a 5th movie in a series that was actually decent? Now there’s at least one; X-Men: First Class is an intelligent, exciting, stylized addition to the X-Men film franchise, and almost supplants X2 as the best X-Men movie.

X-Men: First Class takes place in the swingin’, Commie hatin’ 60s and chronicles the friendship and conflict between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), a telepathic university professor and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender), a metal-kinetic Nazi hunter. I could watch “Magneto vs Nazis” all day, but the real villain of the film is the enigmatic Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), mutant mastermind.

Back Issue Alphabet: Q is for Quasar #3 of 4 (2007)

Annihilation: Conquest - Quasar # 3 (Christos N. Gage, Mike Lilly)

The cover features the star of the book, Phyla-Vell, kneeling pensively while offering up a quantum energy sword. It isn’t very indicative of the events inside the book, but it does represent the character of Phyla; stoic and noble.

Back Issue Alphabet: P is for Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #74 (1983)

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #74 (Bill Mantlo, Bob Hall, Jim Mooney)

This is certainly an interesting cover. I was honestly hoping that the “mind-shattering conclusion to the Debra Whitman saga” would involve her being devoured by an army of tiny Spider-Mans. It’s a very eye-catching design, and it subtly follows the “Z” layout for eye movement.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that the entirety of my Spider-Man reading/watching consists of the 90s Fox cartoon, the Sam Raimi movies, and Ultimate Spider-Man. I couldn’t tell you what a “classic” Spidey story is supposed to be, but I can tell you this: the best Spider-Man stories always have a grounded human story going on alongside whatever scientific insanity is going on at the time. Case in point, in the cartoon, there was an episode where Curt Conners is abducted by a race of lizard people, turned into The Lizard, and then tries to hotwire the neogenic recombinator to turn all of New York into lizard people; the underlying message of the episode is that marriage is about working through the tough times together, as explained by Mrs Conners. Awe, how heart warming!

April Fool's 2011 Roundup

April 1st is the best day of the year to be on the Internet. The only thing better than the ridiculous pranks that news sites put up the the legion of indignant hipsters that make a huge deal about hating April Fools' Day. So here's a list of my favorite gags from this year's April Fools.

Minecraft Store - A parody of Steam's Team Fortress 2 store, the Minecraft store's best moment was when you hit the checkout button.

Believability Level: Low. It used the same font as Team Fortress 2.
Production Value: Medium. Wasn't expecting the clever girl to jump out like that.

Movie Review: Sucker Punch

I have never been more prepared to hate a movie than I was for Zack Snyder’s (300, Watchmen) Sucker Punch. This picture really sums up my ire for the entire promotional compaign: